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1970s / EARLY 80s FADS / CRAZES
1.) As a little kid, in the 70s, robots fascinated me. Dr,Who had the Cybermen (cyborgs, strictly speaking), and Daleks. Also, the Giant Robot, on Weetabix's Dr.Who cards. Plus, of course, the Robots of Death, and,later, K-9, the robot dog! The Six Million Dollar Man, too, had androids & cyborgs aplenty. Big Foot was a robot/cyborg. And the Big Foot episodes, although best, were closely followed by John Saxon's robot duplicate. Steve really got a run for his money with him! And robot Oscar Goldman's weight depressed the plush carpet, revealing his fakery! Neither should the Fembots, who gave Jaime Summers such a problem, be forgotten! Even Logan's Run had REM, the android. Usually,70s robots' faces got torn off, revealing a very simple circuit board! Yes, West World instantly sprang into your minds, didn't it? ( The Magnificent Seven's Chris isn't Yul's only memorable role! ) The New Avengers had the Cybernauts return (originally from The Avengers). Being remote control robots, they just did chopping swings, with their arms! More realistic, with technology's limitations, perhaps. Later, Star Wars, of course, had C3PO & R2D2. And the Iron Man, by Ted Hughes, was read to us, in school, aged 8! In the 70s, a robot board game, in which a little robot with a pointer, went to the answers, to questions, provided fascination too (even if the game was – strictly speaking - a 60s hand-me-down! ) Some of my favourite 70s toys were Cyborg, Muton, and Android!
https://moviesandmania.com/2019/08/11/cyborg-muton-and-android-sci-fi-toys/
You also got Micronauts, and their 'interchangeable' world! As the 80s dawned, the 70s robots hang-over continued, with Twiki, on Buck Rogers, and the Cylons, on Battlestar Galactica. Metal Mickey came later, as a kind of last gasp, of the robots thing! And 70s Marvel had so many robots – boy! I even thought Iron Man was a robot, initially!
2.) As a 70s little kid, Kung Fu was fascinating, just like robots! A fire-man's lift throw, by Caine, seemed amazing! It looked so simple, but was 'secret knowledge', you could beat any opponent with! To awe-struck little kids, that's how it looked! Even before then, the 70s Kung Fu craze started with Bruce Lee. The martial arts craze topped out, with the 2 ChiPs Karate episodes, in the early 80s. As a kid, I thought they were amazing, and couldn't see when the choreography went wrong, or a supposedly knocked-out character appeared again!
3.) The 70s horror fad, I was largely too young for. Nevertheless, I licked Haunted House lollies (and read the jokes on the wooden sticks! ), in the 70s. An issue of Buster & Monster Fun comic also passed my way. And Monster Fun Annual was a Christmas treat, as was Shiver & Shake Annual.
4.) Post-Apollo, SPACE was still massive, in the 70s. Even my infants school had books about astronauts (written for infants), with ring donut-shaped space stations (c.f. 2001), on the cover!
5.) Wine-making/home brew kits. Famously parodied on SPACE:1999, with Tony's crap beer.
6.) Another 70s fad was skateboards. I never had a skateboard. A classmate of mine, however, boasted about a Kenner 'Outrider', he had. It was like a skateboard, but even better!
7.) Fantasy. The Lord of the Rings animated film really gave fantasy, as a genre, a shot in the arm. Also, Sword & Sorcery, with Conan, became bigger than ever!
8.) The Rubix Cube. Late 70s/early 80s, the cube appeared. No introduction's necessary!
9.) Japan. The Vapors – Turning Japanese. Aneka – Japanese Boy. Alphaville – Big in Japan. Shogun – Richard Chamberlain. The Sony Centre – Many high streets. In the early 80s, Japan/things Japanese – particularly technology - became in vogue.
WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN / MEMORIES OF 1970s/EARLY 80s fads/crazes?
Phillip
Oh - in the martial arts section, I forgot 'Monkey', and 'The Water Margin' !
Phillip
Oh - another 70s fad/preoccupation was Uri Geller/psychics/mindreaders, etc. People poke fun at Chris Claremont for his many mind-control stories, but it was very much part of the zeitgeist. A Yorkshire TV show, entitled 'Lifelines', as I've mentioned previously, had a palm-reader, graphologist, and astrologist, try to accurately analyse a person - that kind of thing! Many other TV shows covered similar ground, in the 70s.
Phillip
A lot of fertile ground to cover there, Phillip!
Hmmmm, robots? I did have a Micronauts figure or two. Always caught Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers in their televised adventures. And would enjoy seeing the Robot do his thing on reruns of "Lost in Space".
As for the martial arts craze, I never actively participated; but did love the show "Kung Fu" (and even had the series of paperback books it spawned). Now, I did have a neighbor pal who was VERY into martial arts training. He'd frequently come over and demonstrate his nunchuks (no, not on me thankfully).
On the other hand, the fantasy fad was another matter. My first exposure to Dungeons and Dragons happened in the latter 70s and led to an obsession lasting years. Read all the "Lord of the Rings" books, saw the animated films (still love "The Hobbit"- rather watch the animated versiion over the cinematic). And a prized possession is the dvd of "Flight of Dragons"; a very cool animated creation from 1982.
Oh, and as per other miscellaneous fads- I did have a "Pet Rock" and a mood ring. Never once went streaking, though. Looking forward to hearing if any of SDC's regulars will confess to shedding it all for a quick run...
Redartz - My brother had a couple of Micronauts. "Lost in Space" didn't make it over the Atlantic, as far as I recall. We had the Kung Fu annual - but it may have been early 80s. I was a big fantasy guy - fiction-wise - but never jumped in with D&D. My loss, perhaps! I think Joe's college Olympics hits your final category!
Phillip
Turning 65 on our 250th birthday i would’ve been fadish in the late 60s, early 70s before much of which you write!
Banana seat bicycles, Hot wheel cars, Johnny Lightning cars, Matchbox and Corgi cars, Odd Rod car stickers and baseball cards. That’s all i got for you… it was still a simpler time.
By mid-70s i wandered into reefer / ganja / weed and rock n roll which were fads? Maybe not though i left the weed behind 48 years ago lol. Was electronic synth music a fad?
Joe - Early synth-equivalents were those Casio VL-1 keyboard ones, on German Trio's Da Da Da!
Phillip
Joe - I suppose, for the 70s, there's the Moog synth, for Popcorn, too. 1972 for Hot Butter (the '69 original doesn't make the 70s-early 80s timeline! )
Phillip
Streaking. Yes Charlie ran twice in the nude Olympics at Purdue in 1980 and 1981. Coldest night of the year. I forgot all about it until my kids somehow found some pictures maybe 7 years ago? Lol.
That said, because it was probably near 0°, the family jewels were all shrunk up so nothing to offend anyone in the pictures, lol.
And if I recall correctly, Purdue banned the nude Olympics within a few years, thinking it didn’t reflect well on the school. There may have been a feature article or paragraph in Playboy.
Oh well… charlie excelled at young and dumb and full of…
I love you too! I get to listen to so many interviews 30 to 40 years after the fact of those famous names in music like Martin Ware or Thomas Dolby or Phil Oakey….
They all talk about that Casio synthesizer. And now I realize why it featured in a lot of different songs at the time like by Stevie Wonder and maybe Paul McCartney. The field was brand new and that was one of the only tools available.
I certainly remember ( and loved) the Japanese tin (Horikawa) robot fad of the 1960s - mid 1970s. Of course the big fad was Clackers along with the associated broken wrists. There was also CB radio that seemed big
Along with Kung Fu etc who could forget Evel Knievel dad with and the associated stunt cycle toy
In Scotland there was what could be called a Scooby Doo fad where 1000s of school kid protested the cartoon being taken off air and marched over 100 miles in protest from Glasgow to Fort William.
Oh and making mixed tapes was also pretty big in the 70s.
Paul - Thanks for including some memorable fads I missed! The CB radio craze was associated with BJ & the Bear, and also Smokey & the Bandit. I really should have remembered that one!
Phillip
I forgot all about BJ and the Bear, I loved that show.
In the Cinema, there was some spillover from the 70s into the 80s. STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS kicked off the Sci-Fi / Fantasy boom in ‘77 and it kept snowballing into an enormous cultural phenomenon in the ‘80s. Dracula had an unexpected extra 15 minutes of fame in 1979 , Werewolves were all the rage (sorry) for a hot minute in ‘81 and slasher movies were EVERY-freakin-where. Jason, Freddy and all the rest sliced and diced countless horny teenagers all throughout the decade. The summer of ‘82 is still remembered for the astonishing number of big budget SF/Fantasy films released — E.T., BLADE RUNNER, POLTERGEIST, CAT PEOPLE, THE THING, etc etc etc. CONAN THE BARBARIAN and MAD MAX 2 aka THE ROAD WARRIOR begat mini-fads for cheapo Italian Sword & Sorcery and Post-Apocalyptic knockoffs that clogged the shelves at the Video Rental shops.
Oh yeah — home video was a HUGE deal in the 80s.
When did the Ninja craze get started? Seemed like you couldn’t swing a cat in the 80s without hitting a Ninja.
MTV counts as an 80s fad, and a quite influential one too. Not just for the music, but the fashions, hairstyles, filmmaking styles, etc. MTV is in many ways practically the 80s in a nutshell.
b.t.
b.t. - The early 80s, to me, was late 70s, with a bit extra! 84 was when pop really kicked off, then Miami Vice into 85, 1980s pop culture went stratospheric. I put a boundary at early 80s, because it seemed more a part of the 70s. To me, personal computers (along with Miami Vice, pop, etc), are mid-80s onwards; and those are so big, they're almost topics unto themselves. Your connecting fantasy developments springboarding subsequent movies, however, is a point well-made. Thanks for developing the broader view, which I didn't think of!
Phillip
As regards ninjas, Caine faced one in Kung Fu, still in the 70s. There were only about 5 oriental actors in Hollywood at that time, who played all the parts (one of whom was Quincy's sidekick.) But, thinking about it, I think he played 'Captain Lee', not the ninja!
Phillip
Phillip, you didn't mention the song 'Kung Fu Fighting' by Carl Douglas which reached No.1 in both the USA and the UK in late 1974.
A big craze for me was Planet Of The Apes starting with the short-lived TV series which ran from October 1974 to January 1975 plus the Marvel UK weekly which introduced me to the Marvel universe (POTA No.5 was my first ever Marvel comic). There was also an animated TV series in 1975 plus POTA bubblegum cards, action figures, a board-game, masks, a belt and even a kit for making plaster-of-paris POTA characters which you then painted. In mid-1975 my father took me to see a double-bill of Beneath/Battle at the cinema and it was awesome to see the apes on the big screen - Planet Of The Apes was HUGE for a while in the mid-70s!
Colin- excellent call on PoTA! That was HUGE for awhile.
b.t. - your mention of home video put another fad in my head; which actually is more of an ongoing thing: video games! Still remember the late 70's "Pong" game at our local bowling alley; and by 78 or 79 we had Pac Man and Space Invaders at the Pizza Hut!.Oh man, those friday nights...
Phillip, did you know that Peter Bowles was offered the role of Jerry Leadbetter in The Good Life but he turned it down because of other commitments. He later said he was glad he didn't play Jerry because he wouldn't have got the role of Richard De Vere otherwise - being Penelope Keith's love interest in two successive series wouldn't have been acceptable!
What about 1970s food fads? If so Fondue, chicken in a basket, and pineapple and cheese on a stick are pretty much 70s staples.
RIP Dolly Parton - my local Tesco played 'Jolene' only a couple of days ago.
Paul, I still love the combination of pineapple and cheese - last weekend I had some brioche rolls with a filling of sliced cheddar cheese and a pineapple ring : )
I might say the 1950s nostalgia was a dominant fad of the early-mid 1970s: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, American Graffiti, Grease… and a bit of a revival of that 50s music. Everyone thought Fonz was cool, ayyyyy? Well, until he jumped the shark. CH
Charlie-Joe:
Yep, 50s Nostalgia was a big deal in the 70s. Brian DePalma’s 1974 movie PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE even
poked fun at it — it opens with a doo-wop band in leather jackets and greasy pompadours called The Juicy Fruits performing a song that sounds totally like something Sha Na Na would have played on The Midnight Special.
Someone mentioned Uri Geller and Psychic Phenomena upthread , which reminds me of related 70s fad, Paranormal hooey like The Bermuda Triangle, The Philadelphia Experiment, Ancient Astronauts (CHARIOTS OF THE GODS and all that silliness), supposedly “True” Hauntings à la THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE ENTITY. I admit I did find some of that stuff entertaining (up to a point) but even as a young squirt, my built-in BS Detector kept me from believing any of it.
b.t.
Phillip, thanks for the topic. I seem to remember Frisbees being a big thing at one point in the 1970s.
I too remember Lifelines. Wasn't it presented by local newsreader Khalid Aziz?
Redartz - Computer games are a massive topic ( particularly early-mid 80s ), so I'm keeping it in reserve, for a future SYB!
Colin - Peter Bowles as Jerry? Miscasting! As a foil/counterpoint, laid-back Bowles works best. Yet, the Goods were Penelope Keith's counterpoint. You can't have Jerry as a foil too!
Paul - For 70s food-fads, prawn cocktail & arctic roll are low-hanging fruit. But Hungarian goulash was popular too, at one point. And, desserts-wise, lemon meringue pie was briefly in vogue, I seem to recall! At kids' parties, those little sausages on sticks were quite common.
Joe - the 70s/early 80s UK had faux 50s bands aplenty. Showaddywaddy was a well-known one.
b.t. - Regarding psychic/paranormal stuff, etc - The Omega Factor also springs to mind. Sapphire & Steel, too. Earlier in the 70s, there was Zodiac, that lighthearted series, with Anouska Hempel & Anton Rogers. And...drum roll..kids' show...Rentaghost!
The Philadelphia Experiment, on our family bookshelf, intrigued me, as a teenager. However, reading it as an adult, it was rubbish. Moore & Berlitz act as investigators, sneering at reports of the Philadelphia Experiment, in a cynical manner. Yet their book's blurb & cover portray it as a real event. The reader feels conned. It you're going to publicize something fake as being real, you should, at least, stand by your steaming dump!
'Chariots of the Gods' held such intrigue, on my father's bookshelf, throughout my childhood that, even knowing it's nonsense, I'm still tempted to read it someday!
Steve - He might well have done! I've inherited a Khalid Aziz cookbook - he obviously branched out, after local news!
Phillip
Phillip, I was thinking about Hungarian goulash only a few days ago! In our house we seemed to eat it quite regularly for a year or so. Arctic roll always seemed quite exotic to me on TV ads but I didn't actually taste one until about 10 years ago and I wasn't particularly impressed.
You mentioned martial arts and horror as two separate categories but the film "The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires" combined kung-fu and horror! To this day I've never seen the film but my childhood friend Carl Coffey was a big fan.
Phillip, on BBC Radio 4-Extra this afternoon at 4pm there's a documentary about the history of video games! The doc is called "Generation Games" and it was originally broadcast in 2022.
Colin - My teeth are sensitive to cold food (e.g. ice cream). However, if I wait for it to defrost a bit, I can probably manage a bit of Arctic Roll!
By coincidence, I also considered "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires", in terms of combining 2 1970s fads! ( Incidentally, TLSGV is discussed in the Kung Fu annual I read. ) I finally watched it, on either Talking Pictures, or Rewind TV, a couple of years ago...a bit disappointing. Another combination of two genres was the Buck Rogers Space Vampires episode (combining horror & space stuff. ) Aged 9, I found it quite scary. As an adult, in contrast, parts were almost laughable.
Phillip
Good topic!
Philip - a surprising amount of crossover here with your memories.
Robots, as you say, were always loads of wires and circuits and gears under a plastic shell. The Prog 2 free stickers from 2000AD were another example.
I think it was this tradition that made the robot in Alien so fascinating: I remember finding the big Fotonovel of Alien in WH Smiths aged 8, and staring in fascination at Ash’s interior. All that fibreglass and milk and pasta was almost as strange as Giger’s design work elsewhere.
I remember that Six Million Dollar Man! It’s the only episode I vaguely remember. Was that the one where Majors had twigged that his friend had been replaced by a robot and caught it out be repeatedly asking the same question, getting an identical response each time?
We also read The Iron Man - in 1980, it would have been for me. I *think* my Dad might have tried his hand at home brewing in the downstairs bathroom in the mid-70s - we had tight budgets then, and he did like a drink - but it can’t have come to anything as it’s a very fleeting memory.
I had a skateboard, got it for Xmas 1978. It wasn’t fancy. I was quite active on it for a year or so, then it disappears from my memory.
I was all in on the Rubik Cube thing. I could never solve it, in fact I used to cheat and take the stickers off. I had all different shaped ones. I was able to solve the pyramid one though. And I still have the Rubik’s Snake, which is a very satisfying stress-relief device to this day.
I went to see The Lord Of The Rings - it was one of a few films I managed to see in a beautiful run-down old art deco cinema in the town we’d just moved to, before it was demolished and replaced with a hideous lego build Sainsburys. I can barely remember it, but whenever I see a bit on TV it looks remarkable visually, and I’ve bought a disc to watch it properly. But not gotten around to it yet.
Electronic synth pop was a novelty for the 70s wasn’t it? It wasn’t til about 1979 that electro-pop started making proper inroads.
I think for me there’s a clear boundary line between the 70s and 80s. Mainly because I spent the 70s growing up in Kent, and then we left in 1978 and moved up North in 1979. The things and people I had around me in each decade were very different.
MM - i think you suggested a great SYB. Have all of us moved, ideally in our youth, to discuss the changes we observed?
Speaking of 70s Fad Mash-ups, the Six Million Dollar Man fought (and then befriended) Bigfoot, who was a robot AND an alien too. That’s almost too much 70s Gold in one package! If only he’d had a built-in CB radio …. and maybe an 8-track player that only played Kung Fu Fighting …. oh, and enormous platform shoes….
b.t.
Matthew - Reading your comment, I can't believe I didn't name-check Rojaws & Hammerstein!
My father made home brew (elderberry wine) somewhere downstairs, too. But, like yourself, it's a fleeting memory, so probably nothing came of it!
The difference in dates with the Iron Man (mine was either first term 77, or else 78), must equate to our slight difference in ages.
You've got the right $6 Man episode! I just remember him as Roper, from Enter the Dragon!
I watched The Lord of the Rings in a small-screen Sheffield cinema. I'd only ever known big screens, in my home town, before that.
Phillip
Joe - I'll save my childhood move/dividing line, for that SYB topic, then!
Phillip
b.t. - Now the Ancient Aliens wallers say Big Foot's an alien, who's emerged from flying saucers. Maybe the Six Million Dollar Man was ahead of the game, then! Maybe Stephanie Powers built him from scraps she found on another planet - it's as likely as anything else! ; )
Phillip
Matthew, I also always thought synth/ electronic music was a novelty in the 1970s but I had a couple of pals that loved the stuff from bands like Tangerine, Dream, Space ( Magic fly,) Yellow Magic Orchestra, Jean Michelle Jarre, early Ultravox and of course Kraftwerk . I think once Bowie released the synth/ electronic inspired ( pop) classic Low, it took off.
Phil - I think you should be launching that! This is a superb post, getting tons of feedback!!!
Thanks, Joe!
Phillip
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